


Watchdog

by alemara



Category: True Blood
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-25
Updated: 2012-10-25
Packaged: 2017-11-17 00:52:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/545714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alemara/pseuds/alemara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the 2011 I Need My Fics Exchange.</p><p>Fandom #2: True Blood<br/>Preferred characters: Sookie Stackhouse, Sam Merlotte<br/>Prompt: Standing on the outside looking in. Please, no spoilers for season 4.<br/>Maximum allowed rating for this request: R</p><p>Set prior to TB 1.01</p>
            </blockquote>





	Watchdog

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JK Ashavah (ashavah)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashavah/gifts).



Sam's just a kid when he's deserted for the second time in his life.  
  
The first time around wasn't so bad, really: he was just a baby then and the Merlottes never really called all that much attention to the fact that he was adopted. They were just a normal kind of family: mom, dad, and little Sammy, who wanted a puppy so much that one day he up and turned into one.  
  
No, that's not right. He hadn't wanted anything of the kind, but it happens anyway, and when he trails back the next day, exhausted and hungry, wanting a sandwich and a glass of milk and maybe a hug or some kind of explanation, he stands just inside the doorframe of his untouched room to look out into the empty house with the one clear thought spiking through him, terrible in its perfect clarity and his own understanding: _they're gone_. All of a sudden, the house isn't his anymore. Doesn't belong to him. He may as well be looking through a window for all this house offers him anything like shelter.  Anything like home.

  
That night, he stays in his room, and next day, he leaves.  
  
***  
  
He's still a kid when he meets the woman with the statue. She's tall and curved like a dangerous mountain road, and she smells like nothing Sam's ever encountered before, something rich and sweet, olives and mountain flowers and strange, sumptuous oils.

(Later, thinking of her scent fills his head with strange dreams of dark cypress woods, horned shadows, flickering flame.)

He watches her, first, waiting until she's gone off in her cherry-colored car to wherever it is rich people go when they've nothing better to do before he changes, shrinks, scuttles with waving tail towards the door.  
  
(He keeps trying to change into a dog, an honest to god _dog_ and not just this little beagle puppy, but he just can't seem to do it. Maybe he's too young or maybe he's not doing it right or maybe this is the only thing he can change into: he doesn't know, and he doesn't think there's anyone who does. They'd have found him by now, surely, if they exist at all.)  
  
He doesn't question why a woman who don't own a pet has got a doggy door, but she does, and anyhow that's the least of his concerns once he heads inside and sees the feast she's got all laid out. He just stares at it, for a second: this isn't the sort of thing he gets. Sam Merlotte's lot in life doesn't bring him feasts of turkey legs and fresh fruit and wine and everything good. It looks like something he'd see on TV, if he still had a TV to watch, but it tastes real. It tastes delicious, and he spends a luxurious amount of time just trying all the different things she's got laid out on that bloodred tablecloth.  
  
Too much time, as it turns out. He never does find out how she manages to sneak up on him, or how she's come back and gotten into a dressing gown when he coulda sworn she was off in town somewhere, but it doesn't matter, and later, he finds himself watching her again, only this time its her strange shape in the shower before he runs off with his pillowcase of valuables.  
  
***  
  
They don't work.  The jewels, and gold. Sure, they sell fine and all, but they don't do what they were supposed to do, they don't give him a life back, nothing tangible, nothing he can grab hold of. He's still looking through windows, running away when people look out. Must be that a kid like him, doing what he can do, gives people that strange prickling sensation on the back of their necks, maybe. He doesn't know for sure; all he knows is that no matter how he tries to buy the right clothes and say the right things in the right accent, people don't let him in.  
  
Eventually, he stops trying.  
  
***  
  
He's twenty when he goes to Austin and realizes he can use his talent for bigger fish than just home break-ins. He can change into a fly and sit inside a jewelry store and learn the codes the manager uses to lock up the diamonds and gold; he can change into a horse and fix a race; he can change into his favorite dog and get all the affection and conversation he needs. What does it matter, if as a human, he still doesn't quite fit in? Everybody likes a friendly dog.  
  
Austin's where he finds out what he is. It's a full moon and the change comes, like it always does, when he's out on the prairie, running in long loping coyote strides, before a hare comes dashing out of the tall grass to blur across his path. He chases that damn hare all night, and it's only in the morning that he realizes he couldn't catch it because the thing could think just as well as he can. The hare turns out to be a fidgety kid, sixteen or seventeen or so, with dyed blue hair and something of the hare's frightened wariness in her eyes at all times. Her name's Hazel, which seems apt. She's just a kid, but she knows what they are and what they're called, and she spends the rest of the night talking to him, explaining what she can, but when he tries to find her to run with again, she's gone, disappeared without a trace, except that even hares leave a trail, and he tracks her down, dog nose low to the ground, dog tail waving with delight when he finds her.  
  
He follows her for a whole damn day, as she goes to school, goes to her softball team's practice, goes to an evening job, goes home, where her house is full of all the stuff it's supposed to be full of: furniture, food, clutter. People.  
  
He leaves Austin the next day, and he spends most of the next week as the dog, because the dog doesn't feel things so sharply and the dog doesn't think about how she could have invited him back, to where she somehow managed to belong, but she didn't.  
  
It's just as well. Sam's gotten good at watching, over the years, but he's not so hot at being on the inside, anymore, isn't sure he'd remember how to be even if he got the chance. Maybe it's lonely, outside looking in, but at least he's not the one getting left behind anymore.  
  
***  
  
He goes from town to town as he grows up, but Hazel's the only shifter he finds and he just can't seem to grasp a niche anywhere else. New Orleans, Dallas, Miami, San Antonio -- he goes as far West as Nevada and spends some time as a rattlesnake, goes to Yellowstone and becomes a bear until the amount of sheer power and strength makes him turn back, scared shitless. He doesn't go North, sticks around the South, but it hardly matters. He'd probably be just as much of a freak up there, and he's starting to feel like the damn dog who's not allowed in the house.  
  
What's so bad about him? He's nice enough, when folk are nice to him. He gets by. He even tries to live honestly, for a while, but then all of his money gets stolen while his back is turned in a park one day, and the next, he starts conning again.  
  
That's okay, for a while. A con man lives by his wits, and Sam's got plenty of those, along with a certain special something that nobody else knows about and can't compete with, and for a while, it's like he's actually chosen this life for himself, like normal people get to do all the time.  
  
That's when it stops hurting to watch everyone else from behind the window, and starts feeling like the right goddamn place to be. He sees so much: he sees the worst of people, the sides they don't even know they have themselves. Nobody bothers to lie to a cute little dog, after all, and he feels a wicked sense of vindication whenever his suspicions are verified and that person who thinks he's so good proves to be just as low life as all the rest. Maybe his life is lonely, and kind of empty, but it's his. He can make it whatever the fuck he wants it to be.  
  
That's when he starts saving up for the bar.  
  
***  
  
He's a man grown when he's betrayed for the last time.  
  
God, he was so sure he was in love with Charlene, with her pretty blonde hair and her laughing eyes and that perfect cherry mouth that he just wanted to kiss over and over. He loved the way she curled against him like a cat, loved how she'd gasp out his name and loved having her to sleep beside him. She'd drape herself with ropes of diamonds and pearls, and they gloweed against her naked skin, and he was so sure he loved her and she loved him back. He would've given anything for her, done anything, and she was the first person since Hazel that he'd even considered telling his secret to.  
  
Shooting her doesn't seem real. He's just watching, that's all, watching as a shot rings out and she jerks and slumps -- he can't believe it. Hey! he wants to say to the asshole who'd helped her betray him. Hey, somebody killed her, did you see that? He watches as her body goes limp, and then all the immediacy is gone. He's crying, and scared as hell, and he hadn't meant to do it. At least the pain's on the outside, too.  
  
Shooting the man is so much easier. He's just a watcher, he thinks. It's weird to watch his own body do something, to watch life get snuffed out, but that's all it is: weird. Sam knows weird, and he is an extremely adept watcher.  
  
***  
  
The first day she comes into the bar, wearing a pair of cutoffs and a sky-blue tank top, he thinks she looks like a goddamn angel, and he realizes he'd never really loved Charlene at all. Sookie smells like strawberries and daisies and deep shady woods, and her smile lights up the whole goddamn room -- at least, to him. He gives her a job on the spot, just to see her smile again, and by the time she smiles to say goodbye, he's lost his heart over her.  
  
Charlene taught him that he can't just go up to a girl and confess how he feels, though, so he watches Sookie and doesn't say anything at all except as a friend and a boss. She's on the outside, too, he realizes, after one long night of work where he'd been standing behind the bar and had happened to catch her conversation with one of her guests. The woman treats Sookie like she's the sort of quiet young thing that's always in the newspapers as having gotten a whole lot less quiet in a real violent sort of way, and Sam doesn't get it. She's pretty and sweet and she ought to be as popular as her brother, but she isn't. She's like him -- except nobody's like him, not really. Not Hazel, not anyone.  
  
He just wants to be around her. She's soothing, and sweet, and naive in a way he hasn't been since he was deserted the second time, by the people who called themselves his parents, and, okay, he kind of starts watching out for her. It's not like she needs protection, or anything, but he gets sort of a sense of satisfaction over keeping an eye on her: the world's most faithful watchdog.  
  
It's a better use to his ability than usual. Instead of waiting for her to reveal her true colors, he finds himself watching just to be near her. Sometimes, he lopes out to the Stackhouse place and sits, a well-mannered brown-and-white dog, just so a little of the warmth that always surrounds her can wash over him. He doesn't mean anything by it, never takes advantage, he's just ... there.  
  
He almost thinks he can tell her everything that he's been carrying for so long, but he also thinks he's wrong.  
  
He's watching the night she comes in with a kid about her own age. She's dressed up and looking so pretty it makes him ache inside: he ought to be the one taking her out, getting her food and driving her home, nice and slow with the radio on and maybe her head on his shoulder, but instead she's with this joker and he's behind the bar, right where he always is. Arlene brings them their order and he's watching the way she's putting ketchup on her plate, head tilted to the side so her hair falls in pale, gleaming curls over her shoulder. Sookie's his favorite thing to watch, and the bar faces their booth, so he can pretty much go ahead and keep an eye on her to his heart's content, and he does, so he's watching to see her face change from something like bored contentment to outright fury, and by the time he's around the bar and headed over, she's already squirted half the bottle of ketchup in the kid's face.  
  
That's the night he finds out she's more like him than he could ever have imagined.  
  
She's gone to wash her hands and cool herself off in the backroom, but he finds her outside instead, kicking idly at a lump of dirt, sitting slouched and unhappy on the little bench they've got out there.  
  
"Sorry for causin' a fuss," she says, and he shakes his head with a smile that's got to have his feelings written all over it, but she doesn't seem to notice. _I love you_ , he wants to say, _I love you like I love sunlight and breathing and cool water on a hot day, like I love the woods and the fields and the blue sky going on forever_. She makes him feel like the whole world is a bubble about to pop and everything is going to be brilliant as Technicolor once it does.  
  
"Hey," is what he actually says, nudging her with a knee. "Ain't like you're causin' trouble every day. I think we can let this one slide."  
  
She gives him a look over her shoulder that's grateful and shy all at once, and it makes his heart feel like it's going to bust something if it fills any further, but past all that and the distraction of being so close to her (she smells so _good_ ) there's still confusion creeping in. It's just that the guy hadn't done anything (he knows, he'd been watching), so why would Sookie, who's always got a good word and a sweet smile for everybody, go off on him like that?  
  
Asking goes against his entire nature, though, so he doesn't ask, just sits there with her while the moon rises slowly overhead, and wishes he had the guts to tell her she shouldn't be with that guy, anyway, because no matter what he did, whatever it was, Sam would never do anything like it. He'd never make her unhappy, would take care of her if that's what she wanted.  
  
But he doesn't, so he doesn't, and even though he knows it means he'll never know the truth and never be able to tell her the truth, he keeps his mouth shut. That's when she surprises him for the second time that night, because Sookie might not be so good at watching, but she's open in a way he doesn't remember ever being. Could he ever tell his secrets, the way she does? Had he ever been that trusting? If he was, it was so long ago he can't remember, and that's why he's got no idea why she tells him what she does.  
  
***  
  
That's the night he should have kissed her and didn't, and things just go from there without changing a bit.  
  
He looks back over it all, wondering what he could have done, wondering whether or not there was another moment, but there wasn't. She'd been right there, brown eyes dark in the moonlight, trusting him with her biggest secret. She'd pressed up close to him, and all it would have taken was a single movement forward, and it could have been his hands in her hair and him finally finding out if she tastes as sweet as she smells, but he didn't, and in the end, she'd gotten a ride home from Jason, and he'd gone back to watching.  
  
The thing is, watching's fine, for what it is. He knows what the moment looks like, now, knows what to look for and knows what he'll do when he sees it again, but days and weeks and months roll by and he's watching in vain. Years, he's been in Bon Temps now, and anybody would say he lives at the hub of everything: his bar is the place every one comes. Everyone knows him by name, everyone likes him, everyone talks to him, but it's not ... it's not ever quite what he expects it to be, because at the end of the night, he still goes to his trailer alone and everyone else goes back to their lives.  
  
Thank God for Sookie, who's on the outside, too, but that's a small comfort since she doesn't know he's right there with her, next to her, looking in at everyone else and wondering what makes him so fucking different just the same way she is. He should tell her, he knows, but he's scared stiff of what will happen when he does, so it lets it go and lets it go and lets it go. He's gotten used to the outside: it's nice and empty and spacious out here, and it's not Sookie's in a rush to go anywhere else, so he stays where he is, distant, and waits, and watches.  
  
Someday soon, he's gonna tell her the truth. That will be the day he gets to come back inside for real.


End file.
